Psychiatrists set criteria to distinguish recreational bettors from problem gamblers in Brazil

Specialists in Brazil are drawing a line between casual betting and gambling disorder using three core markers: loss of control, concrete financial harm, and a shrinking social life centered on betting. The distinction matters beyond the clinic, because the Superior Labor Court (TST) is weighing whether protections applied to alcoholism cases should also extend to betting addiction in dismissal disputes.

1. Psychiatrist Aderbal Vieira Júnior, who runs the Proad (Programa de Orientação e Atendimento a Dependentes) outpatient clinic for behavioral addictions at Unifesp, describes a third profile between the occasional player and the clinical dependent: the “deluded investor.” That is the bettor who believes they have found a strategy that can deliver consistent gains. Vieira Júnior, who has treated compulsive gamblers for about 30 years, says this profile “also creates problems, and it can also meet criteria for a gambling disorder diagnosis, but it is not necessarily a dependent.”
2. The clinical markers highlighted by specialists interviewed by Folha de S.Paulo are straightforward on paper and messy in practice: loss of control over the habit, real financial damage, and a progressive retreat from social life into gambling activity. For employers and PSPs watching the sector, that is the relevant line between recreational use and a pattern that starts to look like a disorder.
3. The legal angle is at the TST, where ministers are discussing whether the rule applied to alcoholism should also cover ludopathy in termination cases. In a consolidated ruling from 2012, the court says dismissing a worker with a stigmatizing illness creates a presumption of discrimination and can lead to reinstatement. One group of ministers is considering whether that protection should be extended to dismissals tied to betting addiction.
4. TST minister Alexandre Agra Belmonte, national coordinator of the court’s Trabalho Seguro Program, summed up the issue: “It is necessary to differentiate, with technical criteria, what is a reprehensible behavior and what is a clinical condition that requires protection.”
5. The diagnostic framework comes from the DSM-5, published in 2013. It lists nine criteria for gambling disorder, defined as “persistent and recurrent problematic” behavior with clinically significant distress or impairment. The diagnosis is confirmed when at least four criteria are present, including escalating bet sizes, restlessness when cutting down, repeated failed attempts to stop, chasing losses, hiding gambling, and relying on third parties to pay gambling debts.

For high-risk operators and their payment partners, the practical point is that gambling harm is being discussed not only as a customer-risk issue but as a labor-law issue too. Once a court starts asking for “technical criteria,” those criteria tend to matter in documentation, underwriting, and dispute handling.